On the Importance of Questioning Within the Ideal Model of Critical Discussion
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On the Importance of Questioning Within the Ideal Model of Critical Discussion Fernando Leal1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Both questions as abstract objects and the speech acts, here called requests, by which we ask them play an enormous role in all argumentative practices. Nonetheless, there is hardly a proper systematic treatment of questions and requests in current argumentation theories. This paper is a first attempt at providing such a systematic treatment. This is achieved by following the ideal model of a critical discussion as elaborated over the years by the Amsterdam school of pragma-dialectics. After introducing the distinction between questions and requests, the paper sets forth and illustrates the norms of questioning which implicitly underlie the four stages of a critical discussion in the standard order: confrontation, opening, argumentation, and conclusion. Among other things, it is shown that crucial insights of pragmadialectics are illuminated by the questioning perspective, in particular the distinction between single and multiple differences of opinion, the duties of the antagonist and protagonist roles, the precise character of the argumentation stage, and the different ways in which a disagreement can be resolved. Keywords Argumentation stage · Concluding stage · Confrontation stage · Ideal model of critical discussion · Opening stage · Pragma-dialectics · Questioning
1 Introduction The purpose of this paper is to argue that questioning is central to the argumentative process as described in the ideal model of critical discussion upon which pragmadialectics is built. I use the word ‘questioning’ as an umbrella term, covering two different orders of phenomena, which I shall refer to as ‘questions’, on the one hand, and ‘requests’, on the other hand. In this paper, questions are abstract objects and * Fernando Leal [email protected] 1
Department of Education, University Center for the Social Sciences and the Humanities (Belenes), University of Guadalajara, 150 José Parres Arias Avenue, 45132 Zapopan, JAL, Mexico
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requests are illocutionary acts.1 More precisely, a request is an illocutionary act by means of which the speaker tries to get the listener to give an answer to a question. An interrogative sentence may be used to realize a request; but there are other linguistic devices that can be so used. Thus, I may ask you for a definition of a term X you are using by saying any of the following: What do you mean by X? I wonder what you mean by X. It is not quite clear to me how you define X. Define X, please. All these locutions, and many more, can be used to realize the same request. By means of any such locution I would be doing the same thing, namely asking you a question, in this case the question how to define x. From now on, I shall use small capitals to indicate a question, as different from a request. In this I follow linguists, who use this typographical device to refer to lexemes, another abstract object (Matthews 1974). Now, the questio
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